Fashion Diesel History

Fashion Diesel History

discovery diesel engine problem?

my son has a diesel 300 disco. done 85,000 miles, good service history. yesterday on the motorway it burst the rad in spectacular fashion. all the coolant drained out and he got relayed home. he fitted another 2nd hand rad thinking that it would be o.k. but lo and behold on starting it up it immediately burst that too. with the rad cap off i watched as he started it again and it sounded like it was only firing on 3 cylinders and as it was running it pumped water out the top of the rad expansion tank in huge dollops. i suspect a leaking head gasket , what do you think ??
p.s. he then explained that the previous week he got stuck in very deep water (under a bridge) which came over the top of the air intake and it conked out . he tried to eject the water out of the bores and eventually got it running again o.k. i also suspect this has caused his latest problem , what do you think ?

I have had this before (plenty of floods in the south west UK!). When he went through the flood and the engine stopped dead, water had got into the bores and the engine tried to compress it. Water gets the right hump if you try and squeeze it and something has to give. In this case it has forced the head gasket away inside the engine leaving a breach between the combustion chamber and the water jacket, so effectively the engine is pumping air into the water system at high pressure, hence the blown rad.

Hopefully a gasket replacement is all thats needed, however when the head is off check that all pistons rise to the very top of the bores, if one is even slightly low then the force has bent a con rod (the rod twixt the piston and crank) and this must also be replaced.

Hope everything works out OK!

down to the bay